Archive for the Category » Miscellany «

Frances and I have been off-and-on fridge magnet-types for a long time. Our past purchases have included a big honkin’ Elvis (straight from Graceland), as well as a variety of cool/ridiculous smaller ones. No magnet poetry, however.
The folks at Motifo have taken it to a new level, with a full-fridge magnet set. Very slick and creative; I can only imagine what my chilluns could do to my fridge with that.
There’s a contest to win a set over at Random Good Stuff — check them out, if you have a minute. They regularly keep me plied with time wasters on my lunch hour.

I’m finishing off an integrated marketing communications course right now, and have to do an evaluation of the success of my campaign. Here’s my little bit of obvious:
“Any major campaign that begins without testing of concepts and creative strategies is like cooking for a dinner party without a recipe: creative intuition may result in a satisfying meal, but it

We’re all in Thunder Bay at the moment, and participating in the semi-annual Cambrian Presbytery meetings, which includes the (10th year!) youth event at the meetings. We’ve had a ton of fun with the teens this time, looking at media, marketing and self-image, along with some of the stuff from the United Church of Canada’s “Emerging Spirit” campaign, part of which is the discussion forum, Wondercafe.ca.
On Wondercafe, they’ve got a commercial that was produced as part of the campaign, titled “EZ Answer Squirrel.” This weekend, the teens came up with their own parody versions of the ad.
Here’s the original:

Many that know me know I’ve spent a really, really long time doing volunteer youth work in the United Church. Over that time, I’ve developed a list of games and such for icebreaker situations, many copied from other locations, other people, other resources, etc. Great artists steal, and all that. I wanted to compile it all in one place and make it available, since I have lots of people who ask me for resources, so I’m putting a PDF up here. It’s got appropriate games, activities and such for youth groups, school classrooms, and even for adult icebreakers too. We don’t spend nearly enough time getting silly as adults